I'm going to start in 1755 and Lisbon Portugal it's a time of a great earthquake that killed tens

of thousands of people the French philosopher Voltaire who is about 60 years old at the time
said the earthquake he was opposed to the earthquake he did not accept it and you laugh
people laughed at the time but Voltaire had something very serious in mind he said that he
was against all natural and impersonal forces that circumscribed the work and the livelihoods
of individuals and human beings and that humankind should never give in to natural forces
like an earthquake but should continue to strive and better things on earth and what Voltaire
was really getting at with something very serious he was saying that individuals could
overcome forces of fate and this is a very a very serious topic especially in the era in which
we live in night in the mid-1950s the Oxford professor Isaiah Berlin wrote a very influential
article against vast impersonal forces such as geography ethnic and cultural characteristics
the environment demography economics which he said on you an individual should not
knuckle under and should not accept but should struggle against them and should not accept
any philosophies that that seemed to give in to these forces
Berlin was Professor Berlin was writing
only ten years after the Nazi Holocaust
and the Nazi Holocaust is only one
lifetime removed from our own which is a
nanosecond in human history and so this
whole issue of not giving in to vast
impersonal imperial machine's forces
geographies etc is a very very serious
topic and if you were to read the
editorial pages of liberal publications
like the New York Times or Washington
Post or conservative publications like
the Wall Street Journal it makes no
difference actually because in both
publications in all publications the
elites are saying that it's all up to
the individual the you the individual
can overcome forces of fate the end we
can set things to rights in Syria in
Iraq in Libya wherever if only we were
determined and we were able to do so
well when I'm here - not here tonight to
do is to push back against all this it's
true that 50% a lot of reality 50% of
reality 60% take a percentage is
determined by individual men and women
and the decisions they make and they
have moral responsibility for the
decisions they make nevertheless there
is such a thing as constraints and
limits and things that one that one
should respect rather than simply
overcome and among all the constraints
and limits the most obvious one and
therefore the most ignored one I believe
is that of geography and by geography I
do not mean geography in the 21st
century sense of the word where it's
just a map I'm talking about geography
in the nineteen
century sense of the term where the map
is merely a starting point to
investigate trade routes natural
resources the environment climate
group characteristics culture because
what is what is history what is what is
the culture except the experience of a
certain people in a certain landscape
over hundreds or perhaps thousands of
years that common experience and to just
say that everyone is just individuals
bouncing off each other in a global
meeting place ignores a lot of things
it's it ignores much of what I've
experienced as a foreign correspondent
over decades so when I'm here to talk to
you about tonight is not to say that the
emphasis on the individual and human
agency is wrong rather the opposite it's
profoundly right I'm just going to fill
in the picture with constraints and
limits uh we live in an age where the
global elite flies at six thirty
thousand feet from one continent to the
other and says that everything is
possible that they can engineer reality
from above I'm just someone from
traveling on the ground for decades
saying we have to respect local
realities um geography does not negate
this but it just offers a more powerful
way to look at the world to supplant
everything we know about the forces of
individuals and so let me go around the
world a bit one a nice start with the
Middle East and with Tunisia and
especially the Arab Spring began in
Tunisia in the last weeks of 2010 it was
not wholly an accident that it started
in Tunisia Tunisia is the closest place
in the Arab world geographically to
Europe for most of history Tunisia had
an organic fluid relationship
Sicily in Italy Morocco may technically
be closer to Spain than Tunisia is to
Italy but Italy was the heart of Europe
Tunisia is closest to the heart of
Europe the most Europeanized country
Tunisia was founded by the ancient
Carthaginians and the Romans
if you travel along Tunisia's roads in
the northern one-third of the country
chances are it'll be a road that was
originally Roman or Byzantine it's a
real state it has a state mentality it
has real institutions that function and
institutions are the most crucial aspect
of governance everything from Motor
Vehicles bureaus to Agricultural
Extension services the electricity water
the very things we take for granted and
don't even think about many countries in
the world doing it cannot rely on ah
Tunisia is fortunate in this respect so
whether it has a real state mentality
it's an age-old cluster of civilization
it's it wasn't not just under the car
that Ginny ins and the Romans but under
the Vandals the Byzantines the Turks the
Hoff seeds and others so we know it's a
real place close to Europe and yet when
the Roman general skip-bo Africanness
destroyed carthage he in 202 BC he built
the demarcation ditch a fossa Reggio
which was a line that he dug from Tabaka
on the Mediterranean in the north south
a few hundred miles then directly east
meeting up again with the Mediterranean
around gaw bass and everything within
that ditch was a portion for development
and in fact if you look at a demographic
and economic map of Tunisia today you
will find that most of the country's
development and and population cluster
is within that
and the Mediterranean outside that ditch
there was much less development it was
poor even today you go down to southern
southwestern or southeastern Tunisia
it's markedly poorer and you feel like
you're really closer to Africa guess
what the the fruit and vegetable vendor
vendor who set himself on fire to
protest the poverty' poverty-stricken
conditions unemployment under
development did so and lived in a town
way outside that ditch so that the Arab
Spring started in the most Europeanized
country and you're in the Middle East
closest the country closest to the heart
of Europe yet in a part of that country
that from millennia was underdeveloped
compared to the other part this does not
explain the Arab Spring all it does is
add another layer of understanding to it
which is all that I'm trying to do to
add some background in context now as I
said Tunisia is an age-old cluster of
civilization it's greater Carthage
so is Egypt with the Nile Valley and
Tunisia and Egypt have had their
political problems Tunisia is dithering
from one temporary government to another
Egypt is currently under autocratic
military rule like it was in the Mubarak
Age but one thing we don't we can take
for granted more or less that Egypt and
Tunisia are real States their governing
they have institutions we make one maybe
weakly governed in the moment in the
case of Tunisia one may be badly
governed at the moment in the case of
Egypt but they are governed the very
fact that the military can control Egypt
is a sign of governance because the
military itself is an institution this
is not the situation that of
say in Libya or Syria or Iraq or Yemen
those places were not ancient were not
state longtime States rather they were
vague geographical expressions to have
Western Libya the capital Tripoli was
just an extension of Greater Carthage
historically eastern Libya Benghazi was
an extension of Alexandria and the Nile
Valley Libya as a state wasn't thought
of until modern history essentially and
so therefore rather than just have
problems of who governs and a feisty
debate on who are the ones to lead the
country in Libya the state itself is
under question
well the capital Tripoli is no longer
the capital of a country it's merely the
weak point of Imperial orbit Imperial
like arbitration for governing sects and
tribes in the deep south and elsewhere
places like Libya and Syria and Iraq or
so geographically artificial that they
had to be governed by particularly
austere authoritarian regimes the
regimes in Egypt and Libya and Tunisia
they were they were authoritarian but to
a much lesser degree than in Syria Iraq
and Libya and this again goes back to
geography because in Egypt there's a
natural state that the Nile Valley in in
Tunisia there's a natural state not so
according to geography Libya or Syria or
certainly Iraq which was a cobble
together a creation of the British
putting the Kurdish mountains together
with a Sunni Center and a tribe alized
Chia South Yemen Yemen in fact is an
age-old cluster of civilization but not
one civil
several about a half dozen Hydra moody
himyarite Sabian etc because Yemen is
infernally divided from within by
mountains uh the Turks only nominally
controlled Yemen they governed from the
coast and did not disturb the tribes
inland the British governed from the
coast as well and arranged truces
between the tribes inland Ali Abdullah
Saleh who governed Yemen from the late
night late 1970s to just a few years ago
on a good day controlled maybe 60% of
Yemen I traveled all through Yemen in
2002 and earlier in 1986 and one had to
hire private security guards etc and go
from one tribal region to another Yemen
today is even more weakly governed than
it was under Ali Abdullah Saleh and
ultimately it goes back to a very very
rugged mountainous geography where each
mountain valley was under was under a
rule of its own so what happened with
the Arab Spring was not the birth of
democracy but the but but the but the
destruction of central authority the
weakening of central authority and now
we have in too many places on just the
whirlwind of sects and tribes and and
regionally based ethnic groups configure
geographically with a very very weak or
non-existent center again let me shift
focus to let me switch focus to Europe
and by the way I should say something
about the United States on we said
Americans like to believe that we're
children of an idea the idea of
democracy are the Protestant Creed where
any one Muslim Jew Catholic is an
honorary Protestant if they adopt the
the Protestant Creed that's all true but
there are other there's something else
as well the United States has more
or navigable inland waterways than the
rest of the world combined the
Mississippi Ohio Missouri River system
is what United the continent before the
interstate highway system the United
States exists in the temperate zone
protected by two too wide oceans to the
north is only the Canadian Arctic
because all ninety percent of all
Canadians live within a hundred miles of
the US border
the only geographical challenge the u.s.
faces is with Mexico to the south so the
United States is very blessed by
geography the 13 colonies started up
very quickly because they had an
inordinate number of natural well
protected deepwater harbors Boston
Philadelphia Baltimore etc
in other words protected shielded from
the wind which is unusual and also
naturally deep right before the coast
which is also unusual without those
deepwater harbors American history would
have been very different back to my
little tour of the world to Europe um
Europe in the last few years has been a
financial story an economic story debt
crises unemployment phirni lehigh
unemployment rates etc it's more it's a
geographical story as well the
wealthiest parts of Europe that have
been able to withstand the current
crisis tend to be uh the northwestern
part of Europe the Low Countries in
Germany the Low Countries being Holland
Belgium and Luxembourg a Germany Denmark
Scandinavia open to the seas yet with
rich natural lost sales forests to
protect their settlements so that if you
look at a map of the great cities of
today's European Union
Maastricht The Hague Brussels Strasburg
this is essentially the same spinal
column of Charlemagne's Carolinian
Empire in the ninth century this was
where medieval Europe began because it
was geographically protected and
geographically blessed an extension of
that is Prussian Europe Germany what is
today Western Poland then you had a less
developed somewhat more unwieldy Danube
in Europe which is which was essentially
the Habsburg Austrian Empire stretching
from the confines of Lake Constance and
Switzerland all the way close to the
Black Sea in Romanian Moldavia this was
Lester less developed because this was
open to pressure from the Turks from the
poles from others and the weakest part
of Europe in terms of in terms of
institutions and development was the
part of Europe that was not under the
HAP's not under the Prussians not under
Charlemagne not under the Catholic
Habsburgs but was both Eastern Orthodox
and Turkish in the you know in the long
chasm of the middle medieval and early
modern centuries those are the countries
today that include half of Romania all
of Bulgaria about two thirds of the
former Yugoslavia and Greece the these
were more less you know where
institutions were weaker where standards
were less where unemployment development
was much weaker and where you did not
have modern middle classes at all even
Greece which was not part of the
Communist Warsaw Pact did not really
have a modern middle class till the
middle part of the 20th century a one
can argue about the
decade and and therefore it's not
unusual that this was the part of Europe
that experienced the worst trouble since
the fall of the Berlin Wall
if I was to make a prediction an
economic prediction in 1989 how the
various countries of the Warsaw Pact
would perform over the next 25 years
and I did it totally on the basis of
former empires which were in turn based
on the map I would have gotten
everything nearly perfect on Poland in
the Baltic States in the north um we do
the best hairs to the Prussia the
Prussian and Hanseatic traditions hungry
the Czech Republic Slovakia um you know
the heartland of or at least part of the
heartland of the Habsburg Empire would
do second best but still credibly well
meanwhile the eat the Orthodox and
Turkish Muslim Balkans in the south
eastern extremity would do the worst out
Romania would experience bad government
low growth rates and high levels of
unemployment through most of that period
Bulgaria and Albania would have brief
periods of anarchy interspersed with
periods of bad government uh Yugoslavia
would fall into into warfare in the
1990s and Greece would experience the
worst economic crisis in the EU with
unemployment and inflation rate
unemployment and growth rates as bad as
the United States during the Great
Depression and and and Greece is a
country where as many as 50 percent of
the population according to the latest
statistics do not pay taxes or do not
pay them at the requisite amount this is
the fruit of bad institutions and bad
government that that is that it is true
the fault lies with bad individuals with
finance ministers who made incorrect
choices but it is also a product of
history and a product of geography that
cannot be that cannot be denied let's
talk about Russia for a minute Russia is
encompasses half the longitudes of the
world 11 time zones it's all of it with
the exception of the caucuses and parts
of the Russian Far East are north of 50
degrees north latitude make and because
most of Russians do not live in the deep
south but they live in the cities of
Moscow and say in Petersburg and other
other places Russia is the coldest
country on Earth in terms of climate
Canada may technically be colder but as
I said most Canadians live in the
southern part of it this is engendered a
certain amount of communalism of a you
know of of the need for it it has
engendered autocracy there's a wonderful
book written about this by the late you
Seton Watson about how autocracy is
prevalent to Russia
throughout history also if you're a
Russian leader and you're Vladimir Putin
who by the way thinks geopolitically in
a way that many most leaders in the
world do not you know that your country
encompasses 11 time zones but has less
people in it than Bangladesh that it has
no natural barriers very few it has been
invaded not only by the French under
Napoleon and the Germans under Hitler
but by the Swedes by the Swedes the
Lithuanians and the poles as well and so
you know you need a buffer zone in
Central and Eastern Europe you know you
need a buffer zone in the caucuses
you're terrified of China because you
have a thousand mile long border with
China and the Chinese have while you
have only about a hundred and sixty-five
million people or whatever
China has 1.3 billion people close up to
your border and is
refund the natural resources that you
have therefore you can have a tactical
relationship with China but not a
strategic one you have to always meddle
in the caucuses because that's the only
way to keep Iran and Turkey honest and
although you do not want to recreate the
Warsaw Pact after all Putin knows that
it was the expense of keeping up the
Communist Empire that basically
destroyed the Soviet Union in the first
place you do want a traditional sphere
of influence in Central and Eastern
Europe in other words the Warsaw Pact
may be dead but Russia is still big it's
right next door and so the Russian
factor still hover hovers greatly over
the the rulers in Brussels and Berlin
because they know that the EU crisis
which is now a half decade old the EU
the European Union has lost the
significant degree of bandwidth of
security geopolitical bandwidth in
Central and Eastern Europe which the
Russians are now trying to fill
everything from buying up electricity
grids to buying banks to running
intelligence services etc in other words
you don't want if you're from Moscow you
don't want to rule these countries from
Poland to Bulgaria but you want to frame
their decisions to a certain extent on
Ukraine was not of the Ukraine crisis
was not about the Ukraine per se because
Ukraine is so exposed to Russia that
Ukraine is never going to be a full
member of Europe there are too many
levers of too many levers of coercion of
coercion geographically determined that
that the Russians can force on the
Ukrainians what the what made the
Ukrainian crisis significant was by Tate
was by basically telling the Ukrainians
that they were not just going to join
the EU
the Russians were able to signal to the
book to the Bulgarians to the Romanians
to the Hungarians to the poles to watch
out that they had to pay as close of
attention to Moscow as they did to
Brussels even though they were members
of the EU that the in the 1990 I say
people when their skin did I say to
people when they're skeptical about the
importance of geography I say you can
say that because you're an American if
you were a Polish defence minister or a
Romanian defence minister you would not
be thinking that way because if Europe
oh if you're a Polish official or a
Romanian official the 1990s were
wonderful you joined the EU when it was
strong I mean you started you got into
the EU in the early 2000s when it was
strong you join NATO in the late 90s
when it was strong before the Afghan war
and Russia was conveniently chaotic
under Boris Yeltsin's rule Russia is no
longer chaotic the EU is much weaker
than it was a few years ago and NATO is
coming off a 10-year war in Afghanistan
that it's basically lost on and is
searching for direction so again like
since ol history is back in places like
Poland and Romania people are looking
both ways not just to not just to
Brussels then we have China China is all
south of 50 degrees north latitude China
occupies the temperate zone northern
China Manchuria Harbin is it the same
north latitude is Maine the southernmost
part of China Hainan Island is it the
same degree of latitude as the Florida
Keys China has all the seasons it's
blessed like the United States it has
vast quantities of Nigro carbons of
strategic minerals and metals and water
resources in its Far West it has a nine
thousand kilometer coastline in the
tropics and semi-truck tropics along the
along the Pacific it's perfectly
apportion to be a great to be a great
power in the 21st century China though
if you're the leader of China in Beijing
and you look out at the map of your
country you see good things and bad
things the good things you see is Russia
is weak because it has only 7 million
people in the Russian Far West and it's
birth rate is declining it's negative
it's a negative territory you have a
hundred million people in Manchuria
alone you're hungry for the mineral and
timber wealth of the Russian Far East ah
you're making all these investments in
former Soviet Central Asia you're
building roads and pipelines and rail
networks in Toulouse beckus tan
Kazakhstan Turkmenistan
you're sent former Soviet Central Asia
is flush with Chinese cash ah you're
playing a divide and conquer strategy
with the economies of Southeast Asia um
you can see a greater China that is
beyond the borders of China so China is
bigger than it looks like on the map
that's the plus side of the story the
negative part of the story is that the
leaders of China see the map and feel
very claustrophobic because China albeit
to a lesser extent in the former Soviet
Union is a prison of nations of minority
groups in in the northern part of the
country you have the Mongolians this is
separate from the Mongolians in Outer
Mongolia proper in the West you have the
Uighur Turkic Muslims in the southwest
you have the Tibetans all these people
occupy vast territories about 1/3 the
pup about 1/3 to territory of all of
China they all live in the high and dry
table lands which is the sources of all
the mineral
and hydrocarbon wealth uh Tibet holds
much of the water resources for for
China and so your so that the the night
the Han Chinese population which is the
ethnic cons who are who dominate China
live in the arable lowland cradle of the
country are surrounded by these hostile
minority groups minority groups that is
that as I said can you know are where
all the resources are and so what so
China's dilemma is essentially a
geographical one the Chinese economic
miracle is over China's growth rates are
down from eleven percent economic GDP
growth rates to 7.5% the leaders of
China know that those statistics are not
true that the growth rate is really
below six percent and even lower on the
Pacific coast they know that check the
Chinese economic miracle of low wages
and high export value is grinding to a
close and that even if they get the
rebalancing of the country right which
is a very difficult thing to do
get the rebalancing of the economy right
on the coming years and decades we'll
see a significant amount of economic and
therefore political and social turmoil
in China so what they fear is the very
opening of China that we advise them to
do they fear that with more
liberalization they will have more
systemic um non-stop ethnic unrest in
their Borderlands within the borders of
China and so the question is can the
Hans continue continue to dominate the
minorities in the the can the inner core
dominate the outer core of China during
the next quarter century of economic and
social unrest
let's look just for a minute at the
South China Sea on we and the East China
Sea we look at Chinese aggression
these adjacent seas and see it as
Chinese aggression the Chinese respond
this way they say we're doing nothing
different in the East and South China
Seas that you Americans didn't do in the
Caribbean in the 19th and early 20th
century the Caribbean was a Bluewater
extension of America's Continental
landmass Europe was far away the United
States was close by and the United
States under successive presidential
administrations was not going to let the
Europeans dominate the Caribbean and
gradually from like the first from like
the 1830s to the 1910s came to dominate
the Caribbean the building of the Panama
Canal was the capstone of that China
feels it is doing similar it feels that
when it when it projects naval power
into its adjacent seas it is merely
being benign it is taking its rightful
role as the leader of East Asia whereas
when the American Navy comes from half a
world away to protect its treaty allies
it's being hegemonic because Asia is not
natural to a man up to America it's
basically on one of the one of the
issues of Asia fact the issue Asia is
not about ideas it's all about
nationalism and who owns what in what
stretch of the maritime domain it's a
fight over territory over net and
natural energy resources in the South
and East China Seas the disputes between
China and Japan Japan and South Korea
China and Vietnam China and the
Philippines Malaysia and Vietnam are all
about geography they're all about
territory on who controls what now that
that Imperial systems have died and you
have the
and you have strongly institutionalized
States Vietnam has recovered from its
decades of warfare
so is Malaysia China has recovered from
the Great Leap Forward in the great
Cultural Revolution Japan is finished
with with a half or two-thirds of a
century of quasi pacifism you have
normal ethnic states with strong senses
of nationalism that are projecting power
outwards and coming into conflict in
terms of who owns what in the region um
let me uh I haven't said anything about
Iran Iran even though I talked about the
Middle East Iran is was the great
superpower of antiquity it is one of the
most natural states in the Middle East
like Egypt like Tunisia
uh her ancient Persian empires the if
Amon is the Parthian the Parthian 's the
Medes the sassanids all all had soft
spheres of influence from the
Mediterranean to central Afghanistan and
the Iran of today is no different
um the Iranian state configures with the
Iranian Plateau to a much greater extent
than the Saudi state configures with the
Arabian Peninsula um if you go to Iran
you will see a much more strongly
institutionalized state with real
institutions real centers of power that
compete with each other and operate on a
farm or on a model of far more precision
than you will in places like Syria Iraq
and other Arab states so in fact with
the with the implosion of the Levant of
the implosion of Lebanon Syria and Iraq
for whatever reasons between the eastern
edge of the Mediterranean and the
Central Asian plateau you only have
really two strongly institutionalized
States Israel and Iran and therefore
it's not accidental that the United
States is seeking to finesse the nuclear
issue in order to come to some sort of
strategic understanding with Iran um
finally let me talk about the United
miss turkey there's not there's not
really enough time I could discuss
Turkey the Indian subcontinent but let
me say a word about Mexico in the United
States in the early part of the 20th
century Mexico was one-fifth of
population of the u.s. it's edging on to
1/2 the population of the u.s. its
population growth rate is slowing down
but that in the u.s. is slowed down even
more so the average of Mexican is in his
20s the average American is in his 30s
so that the Mexican and population
increases at a faster rate than that of
the US Mexico is planning deepwater por
new deepwater state-of-the-art ports on
both its Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
with high-speed rail connecting them
Mexico is now the 12th largest economy
in the world at the same time that
economies like Spain and Italy fall
through the floor Mexico a lot liable it
will is liable to break into the top ten
world economies over the next 15 years
or so Mexico just did something very
very important that did not get enough
coverage be in the media because it was
largely a technical story
um they liberalize their laws on
ownership and investment in hydrocarbon
firms what that means boil down to
simple English is that Texas can now
invest in the Mexican oil and natural
yes industry and that the business in
Texas and in Mexico will fuse closer and
closer together ah Texas by the way is
it you know is the heart of the shale
gas boom most of the shale gas deposits
are in Texas Oklahoma and Louisiana with
smaller amounts in North Dakota western
Pennsylvania western eastern
Pennsylvania route of western New York
State uh the way energy is developing in
North America uh we for all of our
lifetimes we've seen the United States
as an east to west sea to shining sea of
mythic patriotic proportions as the
geographical reality but if you look at
what's happening in Mexico with its
population with its energy industry with
investment from Texas with more and more
energy configuration between the United
States and Canada
you see this east/west sea to shining
sea continuum slowly organically being
replaced by a north-south vision of
North America from British Columbia to
Mexico City
in other words up in future generations
that north when you look at a map of
North America without the political
boundaries you see a mountain range from
Alaska all the way down to the Andes and
beyond the idea that this mountain range
is the West rather than just the north
south is something you you only see when
you put in those political boundaries
but North America will geographically
reassert itself because of developments
in Mexico and by the middle of the 21st
century as much as 40 to 50 percent of
Americans will have a working knowledge
of Spanish you know that's real change
that doesn't always get into the news
papers because it's a gradual change
it's not something dramatic ah let me
close up with this there's this notion
that geography doesn't matter because
it's been overtaken by technology
especially communications technology
whether it's jet planes or it's the
internet or whatever that's not true
geography is the the what's happened
technology has made geography more
claustrophobic but it hasn't negated
geography it's like this watch which I'm
holding it's small and and if you can
have even smaller watches like the earth
but the but in order to understand the
workings of the watch you have to take
it apart and see all the gears inside of
it it's that way with the Earth's
geography more and more people more and
more interconnected but that means each
place affects every other place like
never before
it used to be said that Africa doesn't
matter Latin America doesn't matter they
all matter now any country can be
strategic and in order to get a deeper
level of understanding of what what's
going on in that country you have to
study its history which originally is
rooted in geography thank you very much
thank you thank you questions yes no
it's very difficult to generalize about
something like this security policy in
the nation like the United States but
you know face of all of these challenges
that we're talking about on an
international scale there are those who
suggest that the best course for the
country is to withdraw from the world to
a degree and kind of return to our
isolationist roots under this you
suggest that the solution is for us to
further this sort of Asia idea
first of all isolationism is a very
1920s word it signifies a world when it
took five six days to cross to travel
from New York to Europe by ocean liner
it doesn't really apply in today's world
we misuse the word
just because someone is opposed to this
Middle East intervention or that doesn't
make them an isolationist and just
because people you know there are people
who want to take a more circumscribed
attitude to what really or America's
interest doesn't make them isolationist
the serious debate is what level of
internationalism and how far to go the
United States is so engaged in the world
our Air Force and Navy project power
across the whole globe the piece of Asia
is kept essentially by the u.s. seventh
Fleet and you know and button by its air
contingent uh the US may have had
humiliating military experiences in in
Iraq and in Afghanistan but the US has
you know has an aircraft carrier or two
off the shores of the Persian Gulf in
the eastern Mediterranean that allows it
you know to project power inland with
air and missile power and it's so the
u.s. is the Americans love to say we're
not an empire but but our influences of
Imperial like dimensions
our frustrations and problems are those
that previous empires tended to have in
their history so that when we look for
examples we tend to look back at what
did the British do what did the Dutch do
it for example the United States cannot
afford to shrink its military so much
that it would you know that the world
would be in disarray you may see the
world is very violent but the American
diplomatic and military and economic
forces keep a relative peace they allow
countries is diverse and different as
Taiwan and Poland and Georgia and the
caucuses in Israel in the Middle East to
basically not be overrun yet you know to
basically continue to exist as without
us power the independence of Poland or
Taiwan is impossible to imagine almost
to say nothing of Israel or Georgia or
other places I can name so it's about
not shrinking our forces too much but
it's also about I would say projecting
air and naval power but to be very very
wary and shrewd of where we put land
forces in the future is the defense
budget too big I think it is I think you
can shrink the defense budget
considerably and make it more efficient
you know it's a matter of shrunk sharply
shrinking it but there's a limit to
which you can't go in other words so
it's a matter of maintaining a balance
yes
I see the status quo is changing
gradually it let's look I told you about
Romanian Poland in the mid 90s how great
it looked and how much darker it looks
now it's similar with the Caucasus in
the mid 90s people assume that the
Caucasus would all be pro-western on
Georgia was pining to join join NATO
Armenia was pro-russian but not a
Russian satellite and Azerbaijan was
just beginning to exploit its vast
hydrocarbons resources and sort of play
a game
but between balancing Russia against
turkey against Iran against the West you
look now Armenia has become a
full-fledged satellite of Russia with
thousands of Russian troops on the
ground Armenia has joined the customs
union with Belarus and Kazakhstan
essentially rejoining Russia Georgia has
no possibility to get into NATO at all
anam and Georgia is increasingly coming
under the sway of Russia Azerbaijan
because it has considerable oil and
natural gas wealth is somewhat in a more
favorable position but still has to be
more and more cognizant of what the
Kremlin wants so if you remember after
world war one
the British occupied the trans caucuses
for a period of a few years and it was
assumed that two trans caucuses that's
that's the southern side of the Caucasus
Mountains Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan
would all be pro-western because this
was during the Russian Civil War where
but then the car
Ennis can reconsolidated control of you
know and essentially ruled is the pose
arist empire they the British left and
the caucuses went back to being pro you
know aligned with Moscow something
similar but less extreme seems to be
happening now a Putin is in a very
strong position but I believe it's only
for the shorter middle term that in
10-15 years from now Russia is going to
be in a lot of trouble because it's not
going to dominate the energy markets to
the degree that it is now yes Western
what about a great country civil and
Brazil Russia India China but recently
since people are talking about the main
countries Mexico Indonesia Nigeria and
Tempe and I was waiting to see if you
know you project into the future
how those countries alpha with you in
part and with your love yes so many
acronyms to remember and I think the
brick started out as an acronym invented
in a goldman sachs document what we try
to do is group these countries but when
you actually look at their situations
they're incredibly diverse and they have
great differences with each other um
Brazil and you know Brazil is
essentially um you know it's far from
markets it you know it's not as
geopolitically central as China it's not
well institutionalized it has it has a
lot of natural resources on but most of
its population or much of it I should
say
is in South Paulo Rio which is more or
less demographically and economically
part of the greater southern cone so to
speak and is you know is divided from
other parts of the country by the Amazon
Turkey has great possibilities it is
economically reasserting turkey in
Europe inside the Balkans it's uh trying
to you know its tried to exert soft
political sway throughout the Arab world
it has enormous water resources on its
having tremendous government
governmental to political turmoil at the
moment only because the ruling party has
been in power for over a decade and in a
democracy when you're in power over a
decade the voters get tired of you but
in Turkey is still essentially stable
and Indonesia is an archipelago as wide
as the continental United States has
weak institutions it's really not well
governed and nobody you know and people
are hard pressed to predict the future
after President Yudhoyono but and also
you can include Vietnam in that list
because it's got a puppy it's got one of
the 12 highest populations in the world
it fronts the South China Sea it's
incredibly dynamic and it's becoming a
real de-facto ally in the United States
but I think what you're really
describing is that we've gone from a
bipolar world to a short unipolar world
to a world where the United States is
going to be a great power for decades to
come because of its energy resources and
what and what you will have is a series
of middle-level powers that each will be
different than the other
each will some will fare better than
others but we won't have a neatly
divided world we will have a world with
where I think American power in a
relative sense will still be greater
than that of any other country because
when you America with all of its
problems does not have the structural
economic problems of China or Europe
China in Europe face much more profound
problems than the United States does so
I don't see a single competitor to the
United States what I see is a lot of
emerging middle level powers and yeah in
a post-it you know that includes the
countries you named of Brazil Turkey
Indonesia India for certain but each of
these countries are going to are going
to experience significant social unrest
as they climb the economic food chain
and they develop real you know
upper-middle classes that demand more
you know more and better governance from
within and we've seen that in Brazil
recently yeah
George Friedman wrote about the
possibility of Mexico demographically
overtaking California and Texas and that
leading to problems between the two
countries would you comment on that
situation not George and I worked
together because we argue all the time
no seriously we have very spirited
arguments and we we disagree on many
things even though we share a geographic
focus is a geographic geopolitical
starting point I don't think it matters
if Mexico overtakes California in Texas
in terms of population
what matters is can Mexico modernize its
institutions because if it can continue
to modernize and make more effective its
institutions that then it can combine
with its demographic heft to become a
real strong middle-level power at the
moment there are two trends in Mexico a
few minutes ago I spoke of the positive
ones but there's also the negative one
which we know about which is a third of
the country more or less is not governed
by the government their government by
this criminal cartel or that criminal
cartel I am and what is government he
who monopolizes the use of force in a
given geographical space and if a
criminal cartel monopolizes the use of
force then it's the government whatever
the World Almanac may say and so the
question is can Mexico more strongly
institutionalize and become a stronger
state then then the demographic forces
that George Friedman mentions will come
to the fore but if Mexico is unable to
it is unable to you know you know to
essentially reclaim these criminalized
areas especially in the north then
Mexico will still remain
what week because California and Texas
may have their political problems debt
and all of that but they're in a far far
far higher level of bureaucracy and
Institute of modern bureaucracy and
institutions than Mexico is
would you say that
No you know I'll tell you something
whenever I come back to the u.s. from
East Asia and I fly to Asia often is I
feel like I'm entering the third world
in the US because Asian infrastructure
its airports its seaports its hotels
increasingly its cities the Asians make
tremendous investments in infrastructure
especially in transport and I see our
crumbling airports and our crumbling
highways and bridges
Asia's as I said China's problem is
geographic and structural and economic
Japan's problem is that it has
essentially a negative birthrate and
that's why it's investing so much in
robotics don't laugh seriously the
Japanese are leading the world in robots
because they're going to have less and
less people on the South Koreans have a
similar aging graying population um so
there's there are a lot of problems in
Asia but I don't see Asia as 50 years
behind or 20 years behind I see it as
kind of advancing in post-industrial
technology in a way the United States
still hasn't quite done yeah one last
question
yes well it's interesting
North Korea is it's not just the
communist state it's a national fascist
state it's very similar to Romania how
Romania was in the nineteen 1980s that
the North Koreans rant about the US but
in fact they fear China more cuz china
has real influence inside North Korea
and they hate the Japanese very much uh
it's hard to see a bright future for
such a totally sealed hermetically she
min an information age I think that one
thing we all have to kind of you know
it's a low probability but it's but it
has you would have enormous consequences
if there were to be a collapse of this
of the North Korean regime because North
Korea is a state where two-thirds of the
country are semi starving where it has
nuclear you know or it has a nuclear
capability a sudden collapse of North
Korea would entail an operation
conducted by the US military that
Chinese People's Liberation Army and the
South Korean military would all have to
work in harmony together this is hard to
you know this is hard to figure out very
much North Korea is really the big
question mark in East Asia because a few
of because the fast-moving crisis in
North Korea could determine the power
balance in Asia for years to come
remember if you look at the 20th century
all divided country scenarios whether
East and West Germany North and South
Yemen North and South Vietnam the
experts predicted that they were never
that they would
never unite that they would stay
separate in the part and yet all of them
either collapsed or came together in
fast-moving tumultuous crises that
lasted only weeks not months which
nobody had predicted so that we you know
we have to be prepared for a sudden
implosion or shift in North Korean
finally um I don't see North Korea
giving up its nuclear capability
the North Koreans look at Libya they
look at the fact that Qaddafi had given
up his nuclear program his WMD program
and yet the West deserted him at the
moment of any unrest so that the North
Koreans look at this and say look we're
not like the Iranians we don't have a
massive sphere of influence we're not an
age-old empire we're not well
institutionalized like Iran is we're
much weaker more artificial all we have
is our nuclear capability so as long as
there's a North Korea I believe we're
going to have to deal with a nuclear
North Korea thank you